


Salt Water, Broken Stones

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Gen, Memories, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 12:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1744892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Third Age, the island of Himling/Himring still stands above the waves. Maglor does not know why he goes, or what he is looking for, but one day he sets sail across the sea...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Salt Water, Broken Stones

Maglor didn’t know precisely why he has come. He was wondering it as he watched the dark speck appear on the horizon and grow larger against the iron-grey sky until it becomes a rocky island, topped with crumbling jagged spikes of stone that no longer looked as if they had carved by any mason’s hand, but by the sea itself, perhaps. He carrying on wondering as it loomed up and over his little boat, alone on the flat, grey sea. He wondered as he jumped from the boat, almost slipping on the sharp rocks, slick with salt spray, and as he moored the boat.

He tied it to a misshapen mass of stone that had once been carved with a number but was now worn smooth, the top half broken off. The narrow path had once crossed back and forth, he remembered, clinging to the sheer face of the rock, a column with a number on it placed at each sharp corner. The numbers had decreased as one approached the citadel at the summit. The way had been impractical for heavy supply trains or the march of large numbers of troops, but ideal from a defensive point of view. There had been a road on the other side, atop a ramp with sheer sides and flanked by guard posts and checkpoints, smaller way castles placed at regular intervals along the road.

But, Maglor was sure, that way had long since fallen amidst the crashing waves, so the steep back way would have to do for now. He stood beside the numberless stump of the column, then looked upwards trying to judge how far up the hill he was, for he was close to the top he thought, although the sea was at his feet.

The path was eroded and uneven but still usable, by some miracle, although now it was slick with water like everything else, lashed by the black and churning waves beneath. Maglor picked his way up, clinging to wet, slimy rocks and fallen columns and chunks of masonry that had once been bright yellow sandstone.  _It was softer than the dark bedrock._ _Quarried in the Gap, the stone had been brought to the mountains especially…_  But all was now coated in some sort of green-brown algae, making every piece as slippery and treacherous as the face of the dark rock. Even as he climbed, the waves lashed against the rock, threatening to pluck him from the precarious path and dash him against the cliff face, or else to pull him down into those dark, cold depths… he fitted his fingers determined into the crevices of the rock and hoisting himself up and over a section of the stair that had crumbled entirely. He tried to focus his mind on the rock, the feeling of it digging into his hands. He could feel much in his hands these days, for the ridged scar tissue lacing his palms lacked full feeling even after centuries.

It was good, he thought, to feel  _something_. The damp chill of the wind that went through his clothes and crept into his very bones. The drizzle that was slowly turning his hair to wet tendrils that lashed and slapped against his face in the bitter wind. He focussed on those things, small sensations, instead of the drop beneath, although he knew that if Ulmo had wanted take him down into the black depths or dash him against the rocks he could surely have done it a thousand times in the years gone by. No; Maglor was fairly certain that that was not to be his fate. And yet, some survival instinct brought a prickle of vertigo to his fingers, startling him. It was almost a relief, he thought, a reprieve; he had not felt much of anything close to fear in so many long, interminable years.

Finally, almost before he realised it, there was a final numbered column, marked with a zero atop a very faint outline of an eight-pointed star. He ran his fingers across over it, very gently, feeling the texture of the stone, muted and dulled as ever by the scarring on his palm, before moving on. The stairs ended, depositing him on a paved platform, the paving stones surprisingly undamaged compared to the stairs, though many had loosened and all were worn to treacherous smoothness and slick with seawater, like everything else.

Maglor looked up, tilting his head back, shaking the hair from his face and letting the rain fall against his skin. The walls of the citadel of Himring loomed over him, or what remained of it. The curtain wall and guard towers had fallen down entirely, and the great drum of the keep within was crumbling. It had half collapsed in on itself, into the large courtyard and market square within, around which buildings had once crawled and clustered, the makings of a small and bustling town.  _Later it had been refugees, medical tents hurriedly set up to treat arrow wounds, cruel scimitar slashes, limbs crushed to bloody splinters on the battlefield, and of course the burns… there were so many burns…_ The stones, once golden yellow, were now dark with the same brown algae, spotted with lichen and ground down by time and wind and salt water. The surfaces of the stones were eroded into a mass of pits and depressions, the lines smooth, but the towers of the castle stabbed up into the sky like broken teeth. Little remained of the towers, although the lower floors of the outer wall of the largest still stood, half broken, black against the grey-white sky.

A fierce, visceral stab of memory went through Maglor as he looked up at the broken outline, as though all the recollections were trying to crowd in at him too quickly, making his head ache.  _The bright, cold mountain air, the wide sky, the shimmering haze in the mornings as the mist mingled with the slight hint of smoke from the north._ Maglor felt his feet taking him towards what remained of the tallest tower, his brother’s own tower. He passed places that he had known, from when he had visited and then after, when he found refuge here.  _After Nelyo saved you from the dragon, when he brought you in on his horse, all burns and shattered bones, semi-conscious from smoke inhalation. Your army scattered and broken, your lands lost. Here was the entrance hall where, many years before, Huan placed his paws on your shoulders and licked your face in an enthusiastic greeting, nearly knocking you off your feet. Here was where the medical tents were set up in the battle. Here was the corner where Findekáno would whisper quiet words to Nelyo when the court of the High King visited in better times, making Neylo’s face break into a weary smile for the first time in months. Here was the solar where you lost soundly at cards to Curvo, and at dice to Moryo when they stayed._ Here was this memory and here was that. The past piled on top of itself, years fallen into broken heaps and different time periods jumbled together like the crumbling masonry of the largely collapsed walls.

The ground was indeed a tumble of broken stones with the occasional stunted, windswept and sad-looking thorn-bush growing amongst them, clinging doggedly to life. Maglor smiled ruefully.  _Fellow-feeling with thornbushes? Why, perhaps you truly have been alone too long._ On an impulse, Maglor climbed up onto what remained of the round wall of that tower. A few feet of wet, crumbling yellow sandstone. He remembered the left handed spiral to the staircase when all the others in the fortress had been right-handed.  _Nelyo designed the original buildings himself. He could have made all the staircases left-handed. He didn’t though. Why didn’t he?_  The thought stuck in Maglor’s mind. He had never thought to ask.

He stood upon the wall, gazing out to sea, still not entirely sure why he had come here.  _Nelyo had stood on the balcony of his study or the observatory at the top of the tower, sometimes all night, when sleep eluded him. He would stare out towards the north, a grim set to his jaw. Or to the south or east where their brother were, or to the west, as if trying to bridge the distance with those burning silver eyes. As if by his gaze alone he could guard them all, keep them from harm. After the Siege of Angband was broken, Macalaurë would join him sometimes, looking out to the east as his brother looked west, their backs to each other, slipping into an easy silence on those nights when neither of them could sleep. Between them they could see all the lands around._

The wind blew Maglor’s hair into his eyes, much as it had all those centuries ago. The sea was the colour of slate, the clouds flat and white in every direction. Even then, he remembered, when he looked out over the burnt and blackened plains that had once been so green and fair but were now turned to grey dust, lifting in eddies in the morning breeze, even then he had sometimes had the impression of standing at the prow of a great ship. The bright banner of the house of Fëanor had flown high atop each of the towers, and the brisk, salt-sharp slapping sound it made against the pole could almost have been wind in the sails and rigging. On those mornings, looking out over the lands as the sun rose, tinged with blood in the dust-haze on the horizon, he fancied the mountains around were great waves, upon which their ship rolled but was never subsumed. _There had been hope then, during the long peace and even after, despite the scorched plains, despite the loss of the green lands and despite the bloody sunrises. There had been hope, once._

Maglor looked out over the sea again, first to the north and then to the east. The sun was not visible behind the clouds, beginning to bruise purple grey as the rain began in earnest. Away from the small pinnacle of rock on which the ruined fortress was precariously perched, the world looked exactly the same in all directions, white and grey and flat. He could see his own little boat bobbing in the waves, far below. It was tied on the eastern side of the rock… he suddenly realised that he must have sailed directly over where the Gap had once been, those verdant river lands that he had once called his own. The thought tugged at something inside him, a deep aching sense of strangeness and disorientation.  _Well at least you feel something._

There had been mountains all around Himring, the world vertical, spiking up in jagged towers to the frosty morning air, bright in the sun. Now everything was horizontal, the water high enough to cover all but the tallest peak. Himring Hill, the highest point in the Marches, proud and cold and unbreakable as its lord. Maglor pressed his lips together.  _The things that are called unbreakable almost invariably aren’t._

There were gulls, wheeling high above, their mournful cries lodging in Maglor’s mind, causing little, blunted twists of pain, even after all this time.  _The ones who are left in Middle Earth hear the call of the gulls and it wakes in them a desire to sail west, to leave, to find peace…_  he stared west, but all he could see was the dark bulk of Tol Fuin, rising out of the rain, and the pale speck that was Tol Morwen on the horizon beyond. Apart from that there was only more featureless sea. 

He peered over the brink at his feet. On this side of the hill there was no gradient, the cliff face even more sheer than where he had climbed, and the waters lashed and sucked against the rocks far below, spray licking upwards in vicious gouts. He spent a moment letting the sensation of the edge of the wall against his the balls of his feet permeate his consciousness, feeling it through the soles of his boots, rocking backwards and forwards, just a little. He was suddenly seized by a mad urge to jump, to fall, to hear the wind and the cry of the gulls for a brief soaring instant before his body hit the dark water and he was dragged down into that water, black and shiny as liquid obsidian. He would likely be dashed to pieces against the rocks before he drowned, he thought, with a strangely detached fascination. Either way  his body would lie in the quiet at the bottom of the sea…  _should have been there long ago_ , said a small voice in Maglor’s head.  _Ulmo would welcome you as an old friend, and happily place your hand in Námo’s to lead you to the grey Halls in which your voice would be stilled forever. There are no voices in the Halls. You should jump, for Nelyo did, into fire, and this is only salt water. It will not hurt. Join your father’s jewel at the bottom of the ocean. It’s long past time._

Maglor stood for a long moment, staring at the restless waters. At last he sighed, stepping back from the edge. The succession of thoughts was a familiar one after all these years; he knew their pattern. They had little power over him. He closed his eyes, listening, letting the chill of the wind and the by now horizontal, driving rain against his face burn through him. The wind was not the same wind, for it was damp and smelled of the sea. Before the wind had been dry and crisp, water frozen to fine powdery flakes of snow that shimmered on frosty mornings. He opened his eyes and climbed down off the wall.

Slowly, he picked his way across the muddy, uneven ground, and back to the top of the staircase. He was still not entirely sure why he had come, of what he thought he had been looking for. Or of whether he had found it. He squinted at the sky, for the rain was slowing, the clouds beginning to part. It seemed to be later than he had realised. He set his jaw, realising that he could not leave here tonight, for it was one thing to make the journey across the sea in daylight, but at night, without a light, it would be much to dangerous. Maglor had no lampstone. Sighing, he cast around for some cover amid the ruins, a scant piece of dry ground on which to make a fire.

Somewhere with the remains of a roof would be best, he thought wistfully. But he could not deceive even himself that it was because of the fire. The clouds were clearing. When it was dark, and there were no clouds left, he would be able to see the brightest star in the sky, white and pure and heart-stoppingly beautiful.

Maglor had even less desire to see that star today than usual.

Not here.


End file.
